Zac Lomax has been granted a release from the final three years of his NRL contract with Parramatta following speculation the representative winger would defect to R360.<\/p>\n
The club on Sunday confirmed Lomax (6\u20193, 105kg) would leave immediately \u201cto pursue opportunities outside the NRL\u201d.<\/p>\n
His departure follows the exit of Melbourne\u2019s star fullback Ryan Papenhuyzen, who had also been linked with a move to the breakaway rugby union competition set to launch late next year.<\/p>\n
Lomax, 26, had joined the Eels from St George Illawarra after the 2024 season on a deal reportedly worth some $700,000 annually.<\/p>\n
The NSW Origin gun\u2019s release was agreed to by the Eels, on the basis he would not join a rival NRL club without their permission.<\/p>\n
Lomax\u2019s premature exit frees up space in the salary cap for the Eels, who recently re-signed fellow winger Josh Addo-Carr and have Storm playmaker Jonah Pezet arriving for a one-season cameo before his move to the Broncos.<\/p>\n
There have been reported attempts from R360 to lure Brisbane, NSW and Australian star Payne Haas on a salary north of $3 million a season.<\/p>\n
Despite Australian Rugby League Commission chief Peter V\u2019landys\u2019 attempts to rubbish the concept as a \u201ccompetition out of a Corn Flakes box\u201d, the NRL has threatened players with 10-year bans for defection to the rebel league.<\/p>\n
Most major rugby union nations, including Australia, are prepared to blacklist players from Test representation if they sign R360 deals.<\/p>\n
Argentina, Fiji<\/a> and Japan<\/a> weren\u2019t signatories to that commitment, with Melbourne CEO Justin Rodski floating the latter as a possible move for Papenhuyzen.<\/p>\n The Japan domestic rugby season starts in December 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether or not he ends up playing for R360, or if he ends up playing at another NRL club, or playing rugby in Japan, I don\u2019t know,\u201d Rodski said on Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing I do know is that he needed to take some time away from the game without any pressure on making a decision by November 1 or anything like that so that he could properly assess what he wanted to do with his life, let alone his professional sporting career.\u201d<\/p>\n The Storm fullback and Lomax are both managed by Clinton Schifcofske and while agents have been threatened with the same 10-year NRL ban, it\u2019s unclear if this could be enforced if those signing aren\u2019t contracted NRL players.<\/p>\n The privately-owned R360 league, registered to the United Arab Emirates<\/a> Rugby Federation, is set to feature teams in London, Miami, Tokyo, Dubai, Boston, Cape Town, Lisbon, and Madrid and hold a player draft in July.<\/p>\n Former England<\/a> rugby star Mike Tindall<\/a> is the face and co-founder of the competition, which aims to field six male and four female teams in its inaugural season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zac Lomax has been granted a release from the final three years of his NRL contract with Parramatta…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-288703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}